Planning Commission 03/11/2026 - Mar 11, 2026

meeting

Prince William County Planning Commission 6h 59m 3 speakers 8 agenda items transcribed 2 months ago official recording ↗

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What are the student enrollment trends and why was the 14th high school discontinued?

Qwendolyn N. Brown 0:07

Good evening, Commissioners, Tony Austin, Planning Office. This evening, we will have a presentation for the proposed capital improvement program for the fiscal years 2027 through 2031. And Mr. Dave Beavers is here from the Planning and Financial Budget Department. And we have Mr. Scott Halsey online, who is the coordinator for the Facility Planning Research Assessment and Data Services Department, who will be the one doing the presentation this evening. Thank you. Scott, can you hear us? Yes, I can. You are more than welcome to go ahead and start the presentation.

Mr. Scott Halsey (Facility Planning, Research, Assessment & Data Services) / Commissioner Scheifler and occasional other commissioner (context-dependent) 1:01

Okay. So a little outline of the presentation tonight is we're going to start with the student enrollment trends and then look at the 14th high school considerations. And then we're going to migrate into the approved and proposed capital improvement projects that we had last year in our CIP that was approved and what we're proposing this year and this year's CIP with new constructions, additions, renovation, maintenance, and different energy efficiency and sustainability measures. And then of course the impacts it will have on our budget. So, a highlight overall of the presentation, we are looking at enrollment is continuing to decline, yielding significant capacity gaps at schools, and these changes will lead to multiple future decisions about facility usage, long-term and short-term.

Mr. Scott Halsey (Facility Planning, Research, Assessment & Data Services) / Commissioner Scheifler and occasional other commissioner (context-dependent) 1:50

And we could have possible consolidation in our future and looking at possible mitigation strategies of closing buildings. The 14th high school costs have risen dramatically, and that's where we came up with a scenario A, of continuing with the 14th high school, or scenario B, discontinuing the 14th high school. Our board did recently vote to approve to discontinue the 14th high school, which they selected scenario B, and that's what we will be presenting mostly on tonight. So jumping into the student enrollment and long term plannings and considerations, looking at the overall lay of the land population and what is going on in Prince William County, we are still seeing out migration to the Richmond suburbs to the Raleigh area.

Mr. Scott Halsey (Facility Planning, Research, Assessment & Data Services) / Commissioner Scheifler and occasional other commissioner (context-dependent) 2:41

It has the out migration has slowed down. A little bit since the pandemic where we're almost seeing an even shift of a little bit less than 2% of out migration. We are seeing declining birth rates birth rates are declining since 2014 we did see a slight increase in the 2122 year and that might be a pandemic boom kind of like the baby boom back in the day. But the trend has continued downward, and we're roughly at 5,717 births, which in five years, we would see them as possible kindergartners in our system. So looking at our population period pyramid, you see that the top is very heavy. We have roughly 7000 students at the high school level and then at the elementary school level we're seeing roughly 5500 to 6500 students from the 12th grade cohort.

Mr. Scott Halsey (Facility Planning, Research, Assessment & Data Services) / Commissioner Scheifler and occasional other commissioner (context-dependent) 3:38

to the kindergarten cohort, we see a delta of roughly 1,600 students, which as that bigger cohort comes in and that smaller cohort comes in, we're going to see that declining enrollment happening because we're not replacing that upper cohort with the same size cohort that is coming in at the kindergarten level. This past year was the first year since 2012 that our first grade cohort dropped under 6,000 students, which is another milestone to see that our enrollment is declining overall. Looking at our five year projection of PK through 12th grade students we're looking about a 3000 student decline over the next five years it's pretty gradual overall as we're seeing roughly about 1200 students.

Mr. Scott Halsey (Facility Planning, Research, Assessment & Data Services) / Commissioner Scheifler and occasional other commissioner (context-dependent) 4:30

decreasing when we're knocking out those bigger cohorts at the high school level, so we are looking to see roughly a 3000 student decline of the next five years. Now breaking it down, this is by kindergarten to 12th grade at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. The table to the left shows a linear extrapolation if we were to go outside of our five-year and seven-year projection model at the high school level seven years and five at the middle school and elementary school, and how much space we would have available at those three levels.